LaBruce Takes on Zombie Porn

Bruce LaBruce has long blurred the boundaries between art-house and porn films, but his latest project, L.A. Zombie, is in fact a porn flick -- with a message. Check out photos from our day on the set.

BY Corey Scholibo

August 17 2009 12:00 AM ET

"You never think of the homeless in sexual terms," LaBruce says. "But they are just like everyone else. They have sex. They have relationships." He cites Samuel R. Delany's novel The Mad Man, about a gay man who goes around New York City having sex with homeless men, as the inspiration for L.A. Zombie. But let's be clear: Even though this film will have a less-graphic version to be screened where it will, LaBruce is making porn this afternoon, and as the cast members take their Viagra and we wait for the effects so that cameras can start rolling, it is obvious LaBruce has no illusions about that. "This is my fun summer project," he tells me. "I like to keep shooting because it is good to practice your craft," he continues, after I ask him why he's doing it at all. "Some film directors do TV, and I have nothing against TV, but that just isn't my thing. If I waited between films I would be shooting once every three or four years." LaBruce just loves to create things, and this afternoon he does it with amazing calm. Even as the special-effects guy is three hours late and Sagat has yet to get into his zombie makeup, LaBruce keeps his cool. Producers flutter around and Sagat is visibly annoyed, but the beauty of a LaBruce film is that there is always room for flexibility. "We have shot him in various stages of being just a homeless man to being a complete zombie, so we are lucky to have a lot of leeway," LaBruce says. The show must go on.

The special effects in the film will set it apart from almost every other porn film out there. An implied car crash reveals a man with an exposed beating heart in his chest; a man is shot in the back, leaving a cavernous hole that is visible on-camera; and at one point there is a big artificial alien penis that ejaculates black ink. Today, there are gallons of Karo and maple syrup to be made into blood when the real killing begins.